Historical Fiction

A quiet, powerful, and brilliant novel, based on the historical case of a black man wrongfully sentenced to death for rape in 1943 Mississippi. The entire story unfolds over a 12-hour period, with chapters alternately assuming the perspectives of a number of people with different relationships to its events - the defendant, his father, the prosecutor, the executioner, the priest, and many others. It is about both overt and subtle prejudice, reflexive vitriol, muted decency, and the profound ugliness and complexity of race in the Jim Crow south.

Through the story of Hakan, a Swedish immigrant to the United States in the mid 1800s, Diaz meditates on the nature of impersonal landscape, explores a life of isolation, and tours through some of characters that carved the identity of the American West. This is a strange and brilliant version of historical fiction, twisting the genre into something unique. For fans of Cormac McCarthy and Eleanor Catton's Booker Prize winning novel The Luminaries.

You will find this beautifully written historical novel quite different from other World War II fiction you may have read. Spanning the periods before, during and after the war, the women of the title - three widows of men who in different ways had resisted the Nazis - find themselves in a dilapidated castle, coming to terms with the very complicated moral and emotional choices they have been forced to make. Winner of the 2017 New England Book award for fiction.

Through the story of Hakan, a Swedish immigrant to the United States in the mid 1800s, Diaz meditates on the nature of impersonal landscape, explores a life of isolation, and tours through some of characters that carved the identity of the American West. This is a strange and brilliant version of historical fiction, twisting the genre into something unique. For fans of Cormac McCarthy and Eleanor Catton's Booker Prize winning novel The Luminaries.

A multi-generational family saga, an origin story for a nation, an examination of the complexities of personal identity, and a reckoning with the weight of the past; Makumbi’s debut novel (and smash bestseller in Uganda) of a cursed clan is historical fiction at its best.

A British academic is invited to examine a cache of letters found in a boarded-up closet in a 17th century house outside London. The novel alternates between the lives of London Jews of the 1600s whose lives are reflected in the letters, and the contemporary academics who are trying to piece together their stories. Enlightenment philosophy, London's plague and Great Fire, and 17th-century Jewish messianism are all artfully woven into this compelling work of historical fiction.

Get ready to swoon over this book. A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder meets Sorcery and Cecelia in this delicious historical romp. Monty and Percy, BFFs since forever, and, Monty hopes, maybe something more, are headed off on their grand tour. Despite severe prohibitions of alcohol, sex, and other vices, Monty is determined to have a decadent time.

The author of Code Name Verity (the BEST book I read in 2012!) returns with a prequel companion novel featuring Julie Beaufort-Stuart at the age of fifteen, a crumbling estate, a mysterious disappearance, and a fortune in missing pearls. Superb historical fiction from one of the best.